Sir John Soane was appointed architect and surveyor to the Bank of England in 1788 and during the next 45 years he rebuilt and extended much of the bank. Sadly, Soane’s contributions to the building were demolished in the
1920s to make way for renovations, a move considered
by many historians to be one of modern architectural
history’s greatest losses. Today, only historical drawings,
sketches and a few rare photographs exist to show how
the original space would have appeared.

Soane was obsessed by light and pioneered techniques
for incorporating daylight design into his architecture,
striving to ensure that his buildings were flooded with
natural light. He used light and tricks of light to create
drama and beauty. To communicate to his clients the
importance of daylight he often had famous artists of
the day paint his designs to show how they would appear
in their proposed environments. ‘A superior manner of
drawing is absolutely necessary, indeed, it is impossible
not to admire the beauties and almost magical effects
in the architectural drawings of a Clerisseau, a Gandy
or a Turner,’ he once wrote. For him ‘rendering’ natural
light in architecture, and architecture itself, was ‘partly
an Art and partly a Science’.

When the international Project Soane competition
was announced to recreate and visualise in 3D the
original Bank of England, we therefore felt that it was
entirely appropriate to use contemporary visualisation
techniques to showcase the daylighting features of
Soane’s architecture, as we interpreted his intent. The
approach was to use CGI to create still visuals and a
virtual reality (VR) experience for what would have
been the Consols Transfer Office at the Bank. We
selected this space for its wonderful feature skylight
dome and clerestory windows, which Soane would
have designed to allow as much daylight as possible
into the area. Using VR meant we could let the viewer
experience a real sense of the scale of the architecture
and appreciate the feel of the daylighting levels in the
space, offering engagement in a way that no other
visualisation medium can currently offer.

Once in the virtual Consols Transfer Office, the viewer

This page and opposite: Sir John Soane’s impressions of the Consols
Transfer Office for the Bank of England display a keen appreciation
of how light alters the space